Page 15 of First Light
That stiffened her spine. “I’m not leaving until you take me to Lachlan.”
Duncan stared at her for a moment, then shook his head. “I saw him, but I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I ran away and the boy chased me, speaking in an accent I didn’t recognize. Using words that didn’t make sense.” Duncan shrugged. “Eventually I stopped running and I let him catch up. I was tired and… curious. But I wasn’t scared.” Helooked at her. “There was something about him that was so warm. He wanted to know me, and if you knew my father—or any of the rest of my family—you’d know that was a rare thing.”
Carys had to assume that Duncan’s family wasn’t affectionate, but she kept her mouth shut and kept her eyes steady. So Lachlan and Duncan hadn’t grown up together like Lachlan had told her, but the men were clearly the same age and looked identical. Half brothers? It would hardly be uncommon for a rich man to have an illegitimate child or two.
“The boy ran up to me, and he said his name was Lachlan and he only wanted to play. He said he’d never been in the forest before, and he didn’t want to get lost.” Duncan turned and leaned against the mantel, his back to the fire. “I was confused that he looked like me, but I was a lonely seven-year-old boy. Presented with a playmate in the forest behind my house, I didn’t question it. We started to talk and then explore the forest, the ruins, the streams and gullies around the place. I ran back to the house and got food for us, and at the end of the day when the sun was starting to set, he left. Went back into the forest with a wave.”
Duncan walked over and sat across from Carys again. “And I missed him. The moment he was out of sight, I felt like half my own self had gone.”
“You’d only known him one day.”
“Have you ever met someone and the connection is so immediate that you’d swear you’d known them your whole life? Maybe in another life even?”
“Yes. Lachlan.”
Duncan nodded. “Aye, he has that way, doesn’t he?” The corner of his mouth turned up. “Lachlan came back over and over, and eventually he told me that he lived on the other side of the forest. That was all he’d tell me, and I didn’t question it. The village was on the other side of the forest, so that made sense.”
A slight frown marred Duncan’s forehead. “Over time, I thought of Lachlan like a brother, but he never came to the house. If I had friendsover, he would come visit and play with us, but he was never around the grown-ups. Not my parents. Not the staff. He wore clothes that didn’t match our own. He spoke Gaelic along with English, which none of my other friends did, but he taught me.” Duncan folded his hands together. “I was ten when I asked Lachlan if we could go to his house for a visit.”
A knot twisted in Carys’s belly, and she didn’t know why.
“He told me that we could, but that his home was different than mine. That we would have to go in the nighttime and that I couldn’t bring any of my usual kit.” He swallowed. “My grandfather had given me an old compass that we played with and a pocketknife. He said I couldn’t bring them, and I said that was fine.”
“You trusted him.”
“Didn’t you?”
“Yes.” She’d always trusted Lachlan.
Carys felt the room cool, and a log broke in the fireplace, falling to the stone hearth with a crack. Duncan rose, walked over, and added two more pieces of wood.
“I snuck out that night—it wasn’t the first time—and I met him on the edge of the forest. There was a tall man with Lachlan. A man with dark hair and gold eyes. Pale skin—pale even for a Scot—and no expression. None at all. I was afraid of him, but Lachlan took my hand and told me he was a friend. Told me he was our guide and we’d follow him so we didn’t get lost.”
“Duncan, why would you?—”
“I was with Lachlan, wasn’t I? I didn’t question it. He’s so… confident.” Duncan shrugged his massive shoulders. “So reassuring. You do things for Lachlan that you’d never do for anyone else because he makes you feel special, Carys. And he means it. Hedoes. He’s completely sincere in his affection for people, and I’d never tell you different because I know you’ve felt it. I know you know it.”
She didn’t say another word.
“We walked into the forest, and I didn’t blink when we followedthe lights no matter what my nanny had said. I had forgotten all her lessons. The wisps?—”
“Wisps?” Carys filled in the blanks. “Will-o’-the-wisps? The little glowing lights?”
Like the lights in the forest behind her house. Ghost lights, they called them in America.
“They seemed to move in front of us as we walked, and I followed Lachlan, who followed the man. We walked into the forest, and I knew where I was, but it got darker. It grew… stranger. I heard things. I saw shadows I couldn’t explain. But I kept going because I was with Lachlan, and he wasn’t scared at all. Eventually I didn’t recognize where we were. Nothing was familiar, but I saw a light, like the sun rising on the horizon on a winter morning.”
“You’d walked all night?”
“No, Carys Morgan. We’d walked into the Shadowlands. That was Lachlan’s home. That’s where he came from, and that’s where he is now.” Duncan sat back. “If you believe in fairy tales, you’ll come with me tonight and I’ll take you to Lachlan. And if you don’t, then you can walk out the door right now, dismiss me as the crazy blacksmith spinning tales to excuse his brother’s bad behavior, and fly back to America.”
Carys felt the fire grow, warming the room, but she was frozen inside, automatic disbelief battling with what she knew of gruff, practical Duncan Murray who ran a business, owned a huge estate, and pulled tractors from the mud on a Thursday morning.
This was nonsense.
And Duncan believed it. She could see it in his eyes.
“The second choice is what I’d prefer,” Duncan said quietly. “But if you insist on finding Lachlan, I will take you.”